Freedom/Hate (Freedom/Hate Series, Book 1)

by Kyle Andrews

  She took a step toward the fight, but she still had no idea what she was going to do. She hesitated and tried to think of a clever way to help Justin, but when it came right down to it, she could only think of one option.

  Going against her better judgment, Libby ran toward the fight and jumped on top of Bey's back. She wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed as hard as she could.

  Bey stopped attacking Justin and moved his hands to her arm, but she would not release him. She threw her weight backwards and Bey fell on top of her. He rammed an elbow into her stomach and Libby couldn't help but loosen her grip on him.

  Grabbing her arm once again, Bey twisted out of her grip and wrapped his hand around her neck. He squeezed, but not as tightly as he could have. Maybe he didn't want to kill her, but he was doing a good job of coming close.

  Libby gasped for breath and clawed at Bey's arms. She couldn't break free and she didn't know where Justin was. Maybe he was unconscious. Maybe he was dead. The dog was barking now, but keeping a safe and unhelpful distance from the fight.

  It was over. Libby knew that even if she survived this struggle, she would never get away from HAND. She would die soon either way, so she stopped fighting. It was better for her to die now than endure whatever they had in store for her. It was easier than the constant struggle.

  Just a fleeting thought, but it was enough to change her entire life. Everything she thought about the world and every dream that she had about the future was gone in that moment.

  And then it really was over. Bey slumped onto the ground. He didn't get back up, but it didn't fully register in Libby's head. Justin stood over him, keeping his eyes on Bey as he said to Libby, “Let's go. We have to get out of here.”

  Finally able to process rational thought again, Libby got to her feet. She was ready to go, but still uncertain about what she planned to do now. Who were her allies? What side was she on?

  As she glanced down at Bey, she noticed the knife sticking into the back of his neck. Bey was dead. The blunt truth of it hit her nearly as hard as Bey had. When she saw this, Libby turned to Justin and said, “You killed him.”

  She took a step back, as though Justin might come for her next. He was a killer. It was hard to believe that the boy she'd known for most of her life was capable of something like this.

  “He was going to kill you,” Justin said with a wince, putting hand to his wounded side. He was bleeding badly. “He tried to kill me.”

  “You attacked him.”

  “Why are you defending him?” Justin asked her, as though he couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  Libby turned her eyes back to Bey. He was the good guy, according to everything she'd ever known or thought about the world. But Justin was right. Bey was going to kill her or lock her up for something that she didn't do. She knew that there was no other option, but it still didn't make sense to her. He was the good guy.

  Did that make her the bad guy?

  29

  What happened next was a blur. Libby's first instinct was to run back to Sim and lock herself in his apartment, but Justin grabbed her arm before she could step into the stairwell.

  “You can't stay here. They'll be looking for you. They know you were here,” he told her. He then gestured toward Bey's body on the ground.

  The implication was clear. HAND knew that Bey had Libby in custody and now Bey was dead. They would think that she killed him, and any suspicions that they might have had about Libby Jacobs being a terrorist would have been confirmed. No trial was needed. She'd be killed on the spot.

  Libby pulled her arm away from Justin and stepped back. Did he plan this? Did he want to put her in a situation where the only hope she'd have left was to join him and his cause?

  He could see it in her eyes. The way he looked at her was the look of a wounded animal, wondering why it had just been shot. Incomprehension. Disbelief. Pain.

  Then, resolve.

  “Hate me later,” he said, firmly grabbing her arm once again and pulling her along with him. The dog followed.

  “Let go of me,” she said, but she wasn't strong enough to pull her arm free. She was injured, and the more she tried to resist, the more her stab wound hurt her.

  The notion that Libby even had a stab wound was still more than she could handle. Now she had no choice but to run off with a member of Hate.

  Justin opened the front door and stepped out of the building, into the dark of night. There were no streetlights. The moon was now covered by clouds that were beginning to fill the night sky. As soon as they left the building, they became nothing more than shadows.

  “What's your plan, Libby? Go back to Sim? Beg him for help?”

  “I can trust him.”

  “Can you? I'm assuming he's the one who called the guy who just tried to kill you.”

  “You mean, the guy you murdered?”

  “He was trying to kill you! Why is this so hard for you to comprehend?”

  They were hurrying down the street. Libby was sure that she would trip over her own feet, or something in her path that she couldn't see in the darkness. Justin walked as though he could see as clear as day, following the dog as it rushed along ahead of them.

  Logically, Libby knew that Justin was right. Bey was a liar. He was going to kill both Libby and Justin unless Justin killed him first. But it didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.

  “I could let you go back to Sim,” Justin told her as they turned a corner.

  In the distance, Libby could hear sirens. HAND was getting close.

  Justin continued, “But who's to say that he wouldn't just turn you in again?”

  “He wouldn't do that,” Libby insisted.

  “He did it before, didn't he?”

  “He didn't know. He couldn't have known. Bey was supposed to be retired from HAND.”

  “Nobody retires from HAND! They just move the ones they trust out of their buildings and into ours. All good HAND officers eventually become HAND agents.”

  “You're paranoid.”

  “Am I bleeding out from the stab wound inflicted by my paranoia, Lib? Snap out of it. You're smarter than this. Look at what's happening to you.”

  “I just need to stop. I need to breathe.”

  “There's no time. When they find him, they'll be looking for you. You need to be as far away from that building as possible. Preferably indoors.”

  “You sound like you know what you're doing.”

  “I've imagined a night like this for as long as I've been a member of Freedom. The night they come looking for me.”

  “They're not looking for you,” Libby said, just then realizing what that meant.

  He didn't need to be there. He could have left her a long time ago, but he didn't.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked him. “Why are you here?”

  “God, you're stupid.”

  She didn't argue with that. She felt stupid.

  Justin looked upward, toward one of the buildings down the street. She didn't know what he was looking for, but he didn't find it. He turned to another building, and another. Finally, he saw what he was looking for and he started to walk in that direction. He slapped a hand against his leg as he started to move, and the dog adjusted its course accordingly. Libby didn't need to be pulled anymore. She followed because she had nowhere else to go.

  Just as they were about to cross the street, a set of headlights shined across the building in front of them. Justin stopped short, then moved to take cover down a set of stairs which led to the basement of a nearby building.

  Once she was sitting at the base of those stairs with Justin, Libby ducked low. Justin crouched near her, but kept watch. His dog rested its chin on his leg. When he didn't immediately start petting the dog, it lifted its head and nudged his hand. Justin obeyed its order and pet the dog.

  “Do you think they found him yet?” Libby asked.

  “Maybe,” Justin replied, just before a siren began to sound from the direction of Sim's buildin
g. “Probably.”

  Justin stood up and stepped up a few of a the nearby stairs so that he could get a look at the street. Once he saw that the path was clear, he waved for Libby to follow him. He went back to the street and crossed to the other side.

  Trying her best to keep her voice low and not draw any attention from the people who lived in nearby buildings, Libby asked him, “Where are we going?”

  “We need to hide you someplace safe,” he told her. “I'm taking you to Marti's.”

  The answer didn't exactly ease Libby's troubled mind. Marti was Uly's girlfriend. The first time Libby ever met her, Marti looked her up and down as though she were sizing up an enemy. Libby had never done anything to make Marti hate her, so she assumed that the girl was just a snob. The two had barely spoken a sentence to each other since that day, and Marti was perhaps the person who Libby was least likely to run to in her time of need.

  Maybe that was why Justin chose to go to her apartment. It was no secret around school that Libby and Uly had not been getting along, and that Libby had no love for Marti. Maybe it was the perfect place for her to go, but that didn't stop Libby from dreading it.

  They made their way up the street, being sure to remain as quiet as possible. The night was deceptively calm. The siren, now blocks away, was the only thing that Libby could hear—aside from the clicking of the dog's claws on the sidewalk. The only light on the street came from the nearby apartments. It wasn't enough to allow anyone to see them, but despite the darkness, Libby felt as though every eye in the city were on her.

  Eventually, Justin headed through the doors of what had once been an office building. Like most of those buildings, it was now full of apartments, but Libby could feel the ghosts of that building's past surrounding her as she entered the main lobby.

  The marble floor had once been polished to a shine. Decades of neglect had worn that shine from all of the heavy-traffic areas of the lobby, leaving a dull path that led to the stairs and elevators straight ahead.

  A reception desk stood to the right, but no receptionist had manned that post in years. To the left, there was an open area where there may have once been a sitting area.

  The elevators and stairwell were at the center of the building. Beyond them, there was another lobby, with more windows and glass doors. Libby could see her own reflection in that glass, with that other street just beyond. She watched that street, expecting to see HAND vehicles coming to a stop outside, but no vehicles arrived.

  “Normally, I'd say that we should take the stairs,” Justin told her. He had never been a fan of elevators, having been trapped in one as a child. “But the building is a hundred stories tall, and Marti lives on the sixtieth floor.”

  He pressed the button to call one of the elevators, and they waited quietly for it to arrive. Libby kept her eyes on the elevator doors, unsure of what she expected to see when they opened. When they did, she was strangely surprised to see nothing more than an elevator car.

  As they stepped inside and Justin pressed the button for the sixtieth floor, Libby took a good look at him for the first time all night. She'd known Justin for a long time, but he'd never looked like this before. There was determination in his eyes which gave him a harder edge than normal. He was usually so calm and reserved that she never would have pictured him being part of a group like Freedom. But the face she saw in that moment made her think twice about what she knew.

  Justin was taking shallow breaths. His mouth was closed tight. His jaw was clenched. Libby looked down to his side and saw that his shirt was soaked with blood.

  “We have to get you to a doctor,” she told him. Even as she said it, she knew that it wasn't possible.

  The look he gave her made it seem as though he wanted to tell her that she were an idiot for suggesting the idea, but when he replied, he simply said, “I'll be fine once I get to Marti's. She has first-aid training.”

  “Is there anything that I can do?”

  Libby asked the question wishing for a whole list of things that she would need to get done. She wanted something to take her mind off of what was happening. She needed to feel useful in some way. She needed for people to stop looking at her like she was either evil or a moron.

  “We'll figure out what happens next once we've had a chance to breathe,” he told her.

  When they were younger, Justin had a crush on her. She knew it, though he never said it out loud. She didn't want to talk about it because she knew that if she rejected him, it would kill their friendship. Back then, that mattered to her. Unfortunately, keeping her mouth shut didn't stop their friendship from fading.

  As they rode the elevator, Justin's eyes met Libby's for just a moment. She looked for any hint of that boy who had a crush on her. She wanted to see her old friend. But when he looked at her, his eyes were filled with a mixture of pain and something else that she wasn't sure she wanted to identify. Anger? Hatred?

  Whatever it was, it was so far from the sparkle that she used to see in his eye that it made her feel even more alone and even more hopeless.

  The hallway that led to Marti's apartment was long. It was painted in different shades of gray, with florescent lights overhead. It felt cold and lifeless.

  The hall was lined with heavy metal doors. There were no peepholes, so anyone who wanted to investigate the sound of people walking in the hallway would have to open their doors. At least that much was comforting.

  They walked softly. With luck, nobody would know that they'd ever been there. More than once, Libby looked at the ground behind them, just to make sure that Justin wasn't leaving a trail of blood that would lead right to them.

  When they reached Marti's apartment, Justin stopped walking. He stood for a moment, composing himself. For what, Libby wasn't sure. Was he expecting something to happen when she opened the door? A fight?

  Finally, he knocked. Two quick knocks, followed by three slow. Just raising his arm to do this caused Justin to wince in pain. He quickly put his arm down and wiped that look off of his face. He straightened up and took a deep breath.

  A moment later, the door opened. Marti was standing inside her apartment with a pain-filled expression on her face. Her eyes were red and swollen. She put a hand over her mouth, to keep herself quiet as she waved Justin and Libby into the apartment.

  They walked inside and Marti closed the door behind them. Almost as soon as she did this, she pulled the hand away from her mouth and let out a sob. She threw her arms around Justin and held onto him as though he were the only lifesaver on a sinking ship.

  She was crying. Hard. It was so unlike the girl that Libby always believed her to be. At first, Libby couldn't even understand what was going on. Why was Marti so upset? Had something happened?

  Then her eyes drifted to the back of the room, where the TV was on. It was a nighttime talk show now, but only a short time earlier it would have been the news.

  Uly was dead. She couldn't believe that it took her that long to understand why Marti was so upset. Libby had been standing feet away from Uly when his head exploded. She watched someone that she had known her entire life get gunned down in the middle of the street, and yet she hadn't even taken the time to process his death. While Marti was sobbing and grieving like a normal person, Libby had spent the entire night concerned for herself. She was aware of Uly's death, but it wasn't until that moment, as she watched Marti and Justin mourn, that she actually felt Uly's death for the first time since she and Justin watched it happen.

  She leaned backwards, allowing her back to rest against a wall, and she slid down to the floor. She wanted to weep, but the tears wouldn't come. She hated herself for not being able to express the loss that she was feeling. She felt like a complete outsider in a room where people were feeling the death of a person that was actually a member of her family. If anyone should have been sobbing, it should have been her, but she couldn't. In that moment, she couldn't react to anything. Not fear. Not anger. All she could do was stare straight ahead, stuck inside her own min
d.

  That is, until Justin's dog stuck its snout under her chin and forced her to keep her head up. As Marti clung to Justin, Libby wrapped her arms around the dog and pulled him close.

  30

  Marti's first order of business had been, of course, to assess Justin's injuries. His stab wound was deep, but not life-threatening. Despite Marti's protests, he refused to allow his own injuries be taken care of before Libby was tended to.

  Marti didn't say much to Libby, even as she helped to patch up the arm where Bey had stabbed her. They had never had any long and meaningful conversations in the past, and it didn't seem as though they would be having any in the near future, but the silence between them felt thicker than before. Libby thought that there should have been more to say between them now, but there wasn't.

  Libby's wound was cleaned and stitched, but she felt strangely detached from the experience, even without the help of painkillers. She was aware of the pain, but it didn't feel like it was hers. It was as though she were watching everything that was happening to her on a TV screen. There was no dimension to it. No smell. The colors didn't seem natural. Everything was cold and flat.

  Once Marti was done with Libby, she moved back to Justin and began to work on his wounds. She looked Justin over, taking note of the fact that he was sweating. She touched his forehead with the palm of her hand, and obviously didn't like how warm he felt.

  The two of them spoke quietly to each other, about what had happened to Uly and about what would happen next. Libby could barely hear what they were saying, and they made no effort to make her a part of that conversation. This was their world. This was the life that they had chosen. Libby was just the girl who stumbled into it by mistake.

  She was the one being hunted. She was the one whose family was falling apart. She was the one who had lost her home and everything that she knew about the world, all in the span of just a few hours. She should have been a part of that conversation, but truth be told, she couldn't be. All she could do was watch the movie playing out in front of her.